Star Wars replicas, Lucas loses
A business selling replica Stormtrooper outfits being run by the person who originally made them has triumphed over George Lucas in an ongoing copyright battle.
As a result, he will be allowed to continue making and selling the helmets.
In the USA, Lucas won the copyright battle, so he can't sell them there though.
And somewhere, a million geeks reached for their wallets....
More here
In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.
This seems like a valid point to me, though it's apparently not so valid in the US. Sure, the costumes are seen as iconic, but they were in the end mass-produced clothing of a sort.He successfully argued the costumes were functional works rather than artistic ones, and therefore not subject to full UK copyright laws.
"The judges concluded that the helmet could not be regarded as an artistic work because it was a mass produced item - remember how many stormtroopers there were? - and has an utilitarian role," said leading intellectual property lawyer Simon Bennett of Fox Williams LLP.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
Depending on the terms of the contract under which the guy was hired by Paramount back in the mid-1970s, I'd probably rule in Lucas's favor, myself. It was indeed mass-produced clothing (armor), but of a highly distinctive design, and created expressly for a movie that he directed and the rights to which he still holds. The particular design of the clothing did not exist before the first SW movie came out. It's so idiosyncratic, it would surely not have been created at all in the first place if Lucas hadn't authorized its production. If Lucas wanted to license this guy to sell replicas for a cut of the profits, well and good, but he didn't.
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